All My F’s Are For Felting These Days

I’ve always been a fiber girl. From my humble beginnings of hand-making gifts for my family (as well as fun things for myself)…

… through costuming craziness for both work and play…

… to the random things I’ve seen, liked, and tried my hand at…

… I’ve sewn and knit and crocheted and stitched some pretty fun stuff over the years! While I still have weaving on my bucket list of “fiber-y things to try”, my latest experimenting has been in the felt arena.

One cold and snowy afternoon (as many, if not most, of my creative stories begin), I stumbled upon my bag of roving wool that I had picked up on a whim for $3 from the discount bin at Michael’s. With the beige and grey palette of winters in the prairies all around me, I was deeply craving some bold colour, and this bag scratched that itch big time! I ordered some inexpensive “felting supplies” from Amazon (as the shelves are quite bare of these items these days), dug through the Monkeyboys’ craft bin for some felt sheets, and just started playing.

My first attempt was definitely colourful… and somewhat reminiscent of the Trolls movie. 😉 I had a limited range of colours to play with, plus limited/beginner level skill, so I chose to add some finer details with embroidery thread. I also had an 8″ embroidery hoop on hand, so I secured the piece in between the frames and pondered how to “finish” the piece. I stitched a circle of cotton (left over from my embroidery work) onto a piece of cardboard, and then stitched that to the back edge of the felt… and voilà.

I felt somewhat limited by the 9 or so colours (plus white, grey, black) that I had… so I ordered an assortment and just played with what I had on hand while I waited, working on adding finer details and combining adjacent colours for the most dramatic effect.

Ooooh… Ahhhh…

Finally, my wool arrived (though, I’m not 100% sure it is wool per se, and not something else, because it’s SO smooth). It was like a bowl full of candy… floss, and I got to be the kid in the candy store!!! 💗 With all my new toys, I decided to give needle felting another go and attempted to create a more realistic-looking tree.

With multiple shades to play with, I was able to practice blending the floss colours, and also tried different “manipulations” before needling (rolling into a ball or a snake, matting the fibers before adding, etc). While I was happy with the result, the tree needed something. First came the flowers… then the fox… then the moon for balance… and finally, a wee “floral wreath” for the fox. Yes!!! Now, that’s what I’m talking about!

Then… life got busy for a while, as it does, and I took a bit of a break… only to get inspired this past weekend by some lovely aurora images on IG. Sunday afternoon was spent with Dawson’s Creek playing in the background, my puppy snoring at my feet, and sharp objects stabbing at some felt.

I’m still trying to find the proper balance between totally driving the floss into the felt, and letting it be a bit loose and wild on the surface… and I still enjoy adding fine details with embroidery floss instead of trying to fight the floss to do that… but I am thoroughly enjoying this new medium!!!

I’d like to do a bit of research into how “wet felting” is different (I think it involves shrinking the fibers in some way with heat???) to see if I could incorporate that into my techniques… and maybe even try something a bit bigger than these 8″ hoops? Perhaps (gasp) even put a few pieces up on Etsy, we shall see…

All I know is that little by little, I’m adding colourful pieces to all of the corners of my house, and slowly getting closer to my goal of having a sweet, art-filled cottage, like the one I got to stay in during my 2011 trip to California. Though… I may have to forego the Picasso (original!) in the bathroom. 😉